Vehicle internal combustion engines typically comprise a front end belt driven accessory drive. The accessories can include power steering, an alternator, water pump and so on. The accessory drive can also be referred to as a serpentine drive since the belt often traces a circuitous path about the front plane of an engine.
A typical serpentine drive system includes a driving pulley on the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine of the vehicle, a series of driven pulleys for the accessories and a poly-V belt trained about the driving and driven pulleys. An advantage of the serpentine drive is that by providing an automatic belt tensioner on the belt the accessories can be fixedly mounted.
It is also known to provide a decoupler assembly between the belt driven accessory and the pulley to allow the belt driven accessory to operate temporarily at a higher speed or “overrun” the pulley as the pulley oscillates with the speed of the engine.
It is known that alternator pulley can contain one-way clutch, resilient member, or both one-way clutch and resilient member. It is also known that the same approach can be used for crankshaft pulley. In the latter case not only the alternator inertia will be isolated from the belt drive but the inertia of all accessories. At the same time torque requirement is substantially higher as well as challenges for all other elements of the crankshaft isolator.
For a crankshaft isolator with no decoupling feature, the spring stiffness is chosen such that the torsional vibration present at the nose of the crankshaft is attenuated by its elastic element and prevented this vibration from affecting the ABDS in a negative manner. Although beneficial during engine operation, the presence of the device on the crankshaft during start-up and shut down can present challenges. Because the spring stiffness is such that the first system natural frequency is below idle, during start up, the engine RPM passes through this natural frequency causing exaggerated relative motion between the device's pulley and hub. This causes large deformations of the elastic element and can result in fatigue fractures and catastropic failure. This failure can be prevented by the use of stop(s) between the pulley and the hub that limit the travel of the elastic element. However, the stops must be placed and designed correctly to prevent objectionable noise during the start up phase of engine operation.
Representative of the art is U.S. Pat. No. 6,044,943 which discloses a crankshaft decoupler that has a mounting hub, a pulley rotatably mounted on the mounting hub, an annular carrier mounted within said pulley, a biasing device mounted therebetween, and a one way clutch mounted between the annular carrier and the pulley. The biasing device cushions the belt drive from crankshaft impulses and lowers the angular resonant frequency of the belt system. The one way clutch prevents sudden reversal of the belt tension in the drive due to start/stop of the engine or sudden deceleration of the engine and prevents momentary reverse slip belt squeal as a result of the tensioners' inadequate output for the reverse mode. The one way clutch limits the maximum amount of torque which may be transmitted preventing belt slippage during momentary overload.
What is needed is an isolating decoupler having a one-way clutch and an inertia member attached to the hub, all contained within a pulley width. The present invention meets this need.